Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (national varieties of English)

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[edit] Title

The title for this page is vague. Maurreen 06:55, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please feel free to rename it and to help develop it, jguk 13:15, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Less clear-cut cases

I'm a British English speaker, and I'm having a discussion with an American English speaker about the use of English for articles about things from countries which don't speak English at all. So I'm looking for guidance — other than "leave it alone" — on what to do when a non English-speaking country is involved. In the specific case that started the debate, the country is Italy. I've said this to my correspondent:

[...] Several times you have returned to European car articles and replaced "saloon" with "sedan" and "estate" with "station wagon". Here's the thing: Wikipedia doesn't come in British English and American English versions, and so both languages are in use. And of course there are no rules ;) BUT it's a convention that an article about a product from one country will use the language of that country. Easy with Britain and the United States. When it comes to a non English-speaking country like Italy, for example, I don't think one could prove which version of English is spoken more than the other (unless you have sales figures for all language courses and admissions figures for foreign students at universities!) but since Italy is in the political entity of Europe, and British English is one of the official languages in European government terms, and also since Italian cars in general are likely to sell better in Europe than in the United States (because of transportation costs), then I'd say it's pretty reasonable to go with the European spelling. [...]

I'm not trying to prove myself right or the other guy wrong. I'm hoping to canvass opinion. But I do happen to be an advocate of all dialects and of British English because it's a shame when powerful cultures erode weaker ones and we lose folk-history. I am not attacking the United States, but I believe that the influence of Hollywood, for example, is very strong, and it's worth maintaining the diversity of English-speaking cultures. So if there's a sound reason why a particular version is more relevant, I think it should be used. Of course, Wikipedia isn't a soapbox for such issues, but nevertheless, there's a choice to be made.

So, whadya reckon folks? ;) – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 00:23, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

In the absence of comments here, and considering that a consensus has been agreed on the article which made me post here in the first place, I've added an example covering the situation, and based upon that consensus. I hope this doesn't bother anybody; after all, the (present) article states that it is merely reflecting decisions made by Wikipedians, as opposed to being policy.

I've also put in a link to the full policy, which had been absent. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 19:37, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] peculiar decision

Except for Wiki, every publisher in the English speaking world uses the conventions of his location. If a UK edition is published, and then a US, all the quotation marks and all the spelling will be changed. Some books with UK conventions are sold in the US, since not all works have a separate US edition. In addition, some works intending to have a "UK flavour" will retain the UK conventions.

But the results of this policy that has apparently been adopted is that all articles about English monarchs should be in UK style, including both the spelling and the use of punctuation. But look at them: US spelling is used, and US style quotation marks. We can't have a Wiki with style considered acceptable by publishers and educators in both countries, because there isn't any. The only way we could achieve that-- eventually--is to have UK and US versions with all the punctuation etc. automatically changed. This can be done--even Microsoft sells us MS Word with both UK and US dictionaries. Our goal ought to be a style which the readers of both countries will accept, which is fairly flexible, as readers do at least occasionally encounter both.

An additional consideration is the ease of writing and editing. I want to write in the way I find easiest--there is quite enough problems without using an alien style. I do not want to go around changing other people's national style, or have them waste time changing mine. Let them look to my errors.

In the meanwhile, the best we can have is consistency. Certainly within an article: anyone editing an article ought to follow the style of the article, and it would be right to change inadvertent difference as one finds them. Possibly within a series of articles, possibly within a type of article, such as pop culture figures specific to one or another country, or those deliberately maintaining or pretending such specificity.

How many among us would feel capable of writing truly idiomatic Scots or Australian English, according to our subject? Certainly the authors born or educated there, but ought they have exclusive rights for such articles? If we are going to carry this to its logical conclusion, perhaps we should consider chronological period. Shall I write about Darwin in Victorian English, Shakespeare in Elizabethan? Should Articles about the 18th Century be written in their Typography, with capitalized Nouns and italic personal Names, as Samuel Johnson's works were printed? We could design a Bot to change them all, for those to whom it might not come naturally. Or I could change them manually--I've read enough from that period that I can do so rapidly.

I too want to preserve distinctive cultures. Educated in Flatbush, should i describe it in Broooklynese? ) DGG 04:31, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi DGG. You make a very good point about the ease of writing, and the accessibility of Wikipedia. However, there's a theat of some kind of accidental "cultural imperialism" creeping in, because of the relatively high proportion of US editors who would naturally use their language. And that's part of what I'd want to avoid; an erosion of the distinctiveness of the language worldwide. Not the purpose of Wikipedia, of course, but nor is the ignorance of it. The core of the problem for me is that it appears unlikely that there will ever be different editions of Wikipedia for different dialects of English. How often would they automatically synchronise? Presuming it wasn't instantaneous, it'd be likely to mean that vandalism which was swiftly fixed on one edition could be copied over to the other edition before the fix and linger until the next synch, which wouldn't be a disaster but would be unfortunate – and open to deliberate exploitation too.

I don't really buy into the point about the logical conclusion though; few (or no) editors consider Draconian or Shakespearean English to be their native dialect! (Bear in mind that the "Italian example" was a case where there was no immediately obvious national choice; in Shakespearean articles, the immediately obvious national choice is (modern) English English.)

It's been a point of debate over at the Scottish Wikipedian's Noticeboard, however; some people want to put Scots Gaelic translations of proper nouns (which have no such official translation) into articles simply because it's an official language of the country. That discussion, in case its of interest to you, is here. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 13:20, 18 September 2006 (BST)